This Government is emphatically a government by the people, for the people, of the people.
Teddy Roosevelt
The Public Record
Theodore Roosevelt was the 26th President of the United States, serving from 1901 to 1909. A member of the Republican Party, he was born on October 27, 1858, in New York. Roosevelt was a prominent leader of the Progressive Movement, advocating for domestic policies that included trust-busting, regulation of corporations, and conservation of natural resources. His administration is noted for significant reforms and the establishment of national parks and forests.
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We had men of every grade socially; men who worked with their heads; men who worked with their hands; men of all the types that our country produces; but each of them glad to get in on his worth as a man only, and content to be judged…
All that is necessary for our people is that they should get to know one another in order to appreciate how slight are the divergencies and how vital and fundamental is the union among them.
One of the great and splendid features of our American life is that each American has a right to be proud of the deeds of every other American, no matter from what part of the country his fellow-American may come.
But the man who will wrong some one else for your advantage will, when the chance comes, be sure to wrong you for his own advantage.
In public life you will sometimes encounter a man who will endeavor to lead you to do something which down at bottom you doubt being right, which he tells you will be to your advantage to do, usually something that looks like wronging some…
What you need to do is, month in and month out, year in and year out, to do your ordinary political duties as those political duties come up, and only under such conditions can you get really good public servants.
There is no use sitting at home finding fault with the way in which public affairs are handled, and then every four years, in a burst of animosity against some person, voting to turn him out.
Do not wait for some special time when heroism will be called for, but do unweariedly the humdrum work that comes to every man.
What I ask of you and what I most firmly believe you will give is a patriotic perseverance in doing each his average round of duties, in doing the duties both of private life and as a citizen in public affairs each day.
But it is a better thing if we will go home and think over certain of the shortcomings that all of us have and make up our minds to remedy them in the future.
My fellow-citizens, together with expressing the exultation that we have a right to express about our country, we need to have impressed upon us a sense of our own responsibility, and of the shortcomings of which we are guilty if we do not…
If he is not governed that way do not let him sit down and blame the politicians, let him blame himself, for it is in his power to get any government that he seriously desires to have.
We will not lose our birthright of citizenship unless by our own fault.
Remember that the fate of the sovereign who does not do his duty is to get dethroned; and if the average man who is sovereign does not do his duty he will get ousted from his sovereignty.
It is not a figure of speech, it is the literal fact that in the United States every man is a sovereign.
These are the qualities which are fundamental, which should be shown by the man who has to do with public life; and do not forget that each one of you here has to do his share in governing this commonwealth.
If Texas fails in any way the failure will be felt by the entire country, because its influence and its power are so great.
No State can do anything except by possessing just those qualities, because the State is of course simply the aggregate of the individuals within it.
No man can do any work worth doing except at the cost of effort, of self-restraint, of forcing himself to achieve things.
You have here in Texas a commonwealth which in area and diversification of resources already stands unequaled, which in population and wealth will soon be one of the three or four first in the entire land.
I believe in the future of Texas so heartily because I believe that you are steadily taking measures for the uptraining of the children, for the uptraining of the generations that in a very few years will take our places and rule the…
Texas has a right to be proud of its industrial development and of its wonderful natural resources, but I tell you the best crop for any State to rear after all is the crop of men and women.
There is a heap of difference between the critic, the onlooker on one side, and on the other the doer, the man who does the job.
But I do not care how good the material, it is not going to amount to much if it is not given a chance.
Politicians like Teddy Roosevelt
